Bike Tour in the USA (2007), Part 27

Tuesday, Sep. 18, 2007

The Silence of Nature

San Simeon State Park → Los Padres National Forest

Distance: 71.33 km, Time: 5:26.02 hrs, Total: 854.30 km

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.

(Mother Teresa)

   According to my tour guide and the change in scenery I was already in Big Sur, one of the most fascinating natural spectacles in the USA. But I would question if it's one of most spectacular in the world... The sparsely populated and therefore rather untouched region stretches along California's central Pacific coast. In fact, there are no specific area restrictions, but the main part stretches for 143 km between San Simeon in the south and Carmel-by-the-Sea in the north; in the east, the western promontory of Santa Lucia forms the natural boundary. 

   Artistically, there are not a few people who would call Big Sur the "cradle of American landscape painting". The painter Francis McComas (1875-1938) aptly called this area the "greatest gathering of land and sea in the world"! Everyone interested in photography and photographers associates Big Sur with famous American landscape photographers such as Ansel Adams (1902-1984) or Edward Weston (1886-1958), who made his last photo after the onset of Parkinson's disease in 1948.

   As I cycled in thoughts I suddenly noticed something silver shimmering lying beside the road. After further inspection I looked onto a motionless snake wide with open eyes staring at me! It did not look that it was overrun by a car so I assume the snake could not move due to the cold morning. I think 'torpor', a 'state of decreased physiological activity in an animal, usually by a reduced body temperature and metabolic rate' is the right biological word.

Snake unable to cross the Road

  Here is the road is quite flat and therefore easy to cycle. I really enjoyed the view of the ocean to my right and the rough and untouched landscape of Big Sur on the left. In this silence I suddenly believed that I’ve heard the sounds of howling seals. I parked my bike on the side of the road, took a few steps over a small patch of grass, and actually saw a group of Elephant seals right below of me in the sand. Elephant seals, Mirounga angustirostris, are true seals, or earless seals, members of the pinniped suborder.

   In order to warm the bellies of the morning sun, they lay mostly motionless on the sides or on their backs; only now and then they moved lazily their front fins to throw some sand on their bodies. Seeing these fat animals with their happy faces was plainly funny and put a smile on my face. Alone I sat there and took a few long minutes to watch them...

Elephant Seals on a lazy Morning

  Later I rode to a rather large and hectic parking lot; on the side towards the ocean the park authorities built a wooden veranda, the official observation platform. Families tried to catch a glimpse of the seals with their telescopes or tried to take pictures with telephoto lenses. Sometimes freedom on a bike is an advantage; in this case you can discover these interesting animals before others and enjoy them alone and undisturbed-only the seals, you and your senses...

(to be continued)